Mulholland Drive

I still love Eraserhead and Blue Velvet and the OG Twin Peaks, but I'm strongly coming around to the idea that my top-tier Lynch is everything he's done from Mulholland Drive forward. (Which is to say, MD, Inland Empire and TP:TR)

The first half of MD has a “welcoming” quality, and a lightness of touch, that I sure didn’t associate with his movies. And it’s, like, “funny”... I wasn’t expecting that! (When Billy Ray Cyrus showed up, I was like - ok, whaaaaaat is this movie)

Yeah Mulholland Drive is deceptively warm-feeling, for a movie that ends as a tragedy. I love its weird colorful Hollywood.

top-tier Lynch is everything he's done from Mulholland Drive forward.

^^

I like Lost Highway a fair bit, although the car chase scene is the worst thing in it. He's made at least two films worse than LH, though.

fwiw, he couldn't have made Mulholland Dr. if he hadn't made Lost Highway, so even if you don't like it, it's still necessary.

credit sequence with Bowie's "I'm Deranged" + Bill Pullman playing Coleman-esque free jazz at club = best sequences

The video cuts to Particia Arquette's butchered body as one of his best and most horrible ideas. The "call me"/"I'm there right now" scene at the party is essential in his work.

as = is

are!

Rewatched Lost Highway recently and it wasn't nearly as bad as I remembered. It's still near the bottom of the Lynch pile, but I sorta like it now.

Inland Empire is amazing but I can't rewatch it with any regularity. It is a Bad Trip.

I disliked Fire Walk With Me pretty strongly when it came out, but I appreciate it now. It’s still kind of a mess, but pretty powerful – I didn’t appreciate what it was doing at the time, I wasn’t “ready” for it. (It was probably also helpful for The Return to come along and help recontextualize it.)

fire walk with me still his masterwork, even in light of the return, imo

no greater work of empathy in film

Yeah, I totally didn’t get it as a young person. I was like – “Why do we need to see all this graphic, horrible stuff that we already know happened?”

I watched Fire Walk with Me on VHS in '93 without watching a millimeter of Twin Peaks and loved this terrific shambles.

totally second the echoes of MD in twin peaks: the return, that's what I kept thinking about as I watched the show (I saw the film first). which also explains why I am pretty convinced the return is the best season of TV I've ever seen

need to see inland empire now

fire walk with me still his masterwork, even in light of the return, imo

― mellon collie and the infinite bradness (BradNelson), Wednesday, April 7, 2021 8:37 PM (thirty minutes ago)

no greater work of empathy in film

― mellon collie and the infinite bradness (BradNelson), Wednesday, April 7, 2021 8:37 PM

truest truth

I watched _Fire Walk with Me_ on VHS in '93 without watching a millimeter of _Twin Peaks_ and loved this terrific shambles.

By the way (R.I.P.) - https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/tv/2021/04/07/walter-olkewicz-dies-twin-peaks-actor-starred-jacques-renault/7133539002/

fwiw, he couldn't have made Mulholland Dr. if he hadn't made Lost Highway, so even if you don't like it, it's still necessary.

Yeah, I liked Lost Highway fine at the time, and then Mulholland Drive clearly had him (being forced to) rework ideas he'd come up with for LH and doing them better. It's a positive about Lynch as an artist that ideas, themes and modes echo and recur through his work.

I think the first half of Lost Highway is some of his best, the closest to a straight Lynch horror film. Pullman recounting his dream, and that wonderful imagery of the smoke filling the hallway, is one of my favorite images in his work. Whenever it transitions to Getty, though, I rapidly lose interest. I like to pretend the first half is just a short film.

Pullman's dream is one of the most unnerving Lynch scenes, which is saying a lot. I need to rewatch LH, it has been my least-favorite Lynch ever since I saw it but because of that I have only seen it once.

ideas, themes and modes echo and recur through his work

By the end of TP:TR, I was using the phrase "David Lynch cinematic universe" in all sincerity. His works each have their own specific vibe, but they also all have variations on many recurring themes. (Allowing that in this sense Dune may not be canon, but I also haven't rewatched that one since it came out.)

Dune is absolutely canon (see the post-credits sequence where The Cowboy and Bobby Peru are riding a sandworm across Arrakis).

I’m aware from my Twin Peaks research that Mulholland Drive was originally conceived as an Audrey Horne spinoff series.

Silencio!

Yeah I guess Dune would be canon for the introduction of Kyle MacLachlan (our hero) alone.

Several actors from Showgirls (1995) appear in MD, but I won’t go down that rabbit hole.

showgirls and robocop def part of the david lynch extended universe

OMG you just prompted me imagine a Lynch-directed Robocop and I'm pretty sure part of my brain just exploded

Yeah there are bits throughout tptr that specifically recall every lynch project, even stuff like hotel room

Richard Horne is the grown-up Eraserhead baby.

And the pine weasel episode, which is the only one I saw when it originally aired and wondered, 'this is the show everyone is so gaga about?!?'

misread this as garden weasel and thought there was some Larry Sanders/Twin Peaks crossover i wasn’t aware of.

Larry Sanders would definitely exist in the Mulholland Drive multiverse

Do we have a discussion/anticipation thread for the new series he’s reportedly working on?

xpost I don't recall if they ever mentioned which network Larry Sanders was on so we can't say for sure that he didn't air after The Lester Guy Show.

xp

There was some discussion of the potential new series in the TP:TR thread. Tantalizing.

I am v out of the loop wrt unrecorded night, I hope it happens whatever it is

So no mention of Straight Story at all in this thread?

some of the Twin Peaks threads have Straight Story arguments, many have no mention of it

Oh jeez, Alvin. That's a darn good grabber.

I got the Blu-ray... the interview in the booklet is terrific. (Except for the moment where the interviewer, bizarrely, tries to get Lynch to help "analyze" an element of the film – and is understandably met with silence.)

The "Deleted Scene" isn't much, but nice to see it, lol

Is that the one with the Robert Forster and the other cop talking?

Yep - cool to see Forster in an add'l scene.

i think the straight story is very very good and once made a lynch-obsessive friend almost suplex me for arguing that many lynch fans ignore it or dont take it seriously just bc it doesnt feature any midgets or baby entrails or whatever

One of the many interesting things about MD is how "dated" it looks -- in a good way. Like, the hair & clothing styles are extremely "1999/2000"... and I find it appealing, how it situates the film in a particular moment.

There are also other weird resonances with the time period -- like when it cuts to the two "bros" discussing a car accident in a cramped office, you wonder: What's up with these dudes? Why do they sort of have 'Aphex Twin' faces? And in the final segment, Diane Selwyn looks a hella lot like Liz Phair looked at the time. It's just a coincidence (I guess), but it all feels like some kind of "cosmic unconsciousness" at work.

I'm sure this is tediously old news to most, but just in case, Ronette Pulaski and Laura Palmer are in the theater at Club Silencio
https://i.redd.it/gdgejpw04c051.jpg
(of course Lynch denies it)

When I watched this for the first time, during the initial Winkies scene, my wife (totally joking) was like, “One of those ‘Woodsmen’ guys better not jump out....”—and then (of course): Oh, HELL no!

(To add to the point I made above: the “jitterbug contest,” and the cold open specifically, obv. tie into the “swing craze” of the era, and—why not?—the Swingers movie specifically. You’re money, and you don’t even know it.)

Those agent cooper tik toks are hilarious

A minor plot (or whatever) question—from the Wikipedia summary:

A casting agent takes (Betty) to a soundstage where a film called The Sylvia North Story, directed by Adam, is being cast.